Alchemy is a Shaman only tradeskill that allows the practitioner to make potions of various effect, enabling many classes to cast spells not normally available to them. Alchemy isn't exactly cheap. Beginning the trade can cost lots of time and platinum. Choosing to pursue alchemy to its maximum extent can ultimately cost you lots of time and money, but it does have its rewards in the end. ref1ref2

Getting Started

Go to your hometown and buy a Medicine Bag. Next, you'll need to buy the correct ingredients for the potion you want to make. Let's say you want to make a "Potion of Lesser Stability". This potion requires the combining of Lucerne, and Sage Leaf in your vendor purchased Medicine Bag. It also requires a skill of '25' to be trivial. Provided that you trained 20 points into alchemy, your skill should be 20. Therefore, your chance of successfully making this potion are rather good. The more you make a potion the more your skill increases. However once you reach the trivial level, you stop gaining point increases in your skill. This means its time to create more difficult potions to raise your skill.

Five & Ten Dose Potions

Furthermore, as you make your way in the world of alchemy you will begin to accrue a large quantity of potions. To save inventory space, as well as to make your potions more marketable in the commonlands, you may wish to create the 10 dose versions of your potion. To do this, you can either take up Tailoring and craft a Bearskin Potion Bag or purchase one from a player. As the Grizzly Bear Skin is the most difficult part of this recipe to obtain, budding alchemists may find it easiest to go in search of a tailor with the skin already acquired, as most tailors will already have the means to craft a Silk Cord, the other component of the bag.

To craft a single dose potion, place the ingredients into your Medicine Bag.

Dependent on your skill, you will either successfully craft or fail to craft the single dose version of potion.

To create 5 or 10 dose potions, put 5 or 10 of the single dose potions in a Bearskin Potion Bag and combine. This is independent of skill and always succeeds.

Skilling Up

The minimum level to begin alchemy is level 25. At level 25, you may train points into alchemy at your guild master. Alchemy, unlike other trades, is capped based on player level. Looking at the chart below, you can see that until level 29 the skill cap restriction doesn't allow a shaman to craft much. Therefore it is often common practice for a shaman to wait until level 29 to begin alchemy.

Currently on p1999 the maximum alchemy skill that can be reached is 170.

Level:

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

Max Skill:

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

65

70

75

80

85

90

Level:

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

Max Skill:

95

100

105

110

115

120

125

130

135

140

145

150

155

160

165

170

175

180

Suggested Progression

One crafting path is listed here, these potions tend to have more player demand among the population.

Buying Reagents

Alchemy reagents are sold all over Norrath, and different vendors sell different ingredients. It may require a bit of travel to find what you need. Take note of what is sold where to save time in the future. Also keep mind of your charisma, shamans get the best charisma buffs in Everquest and you should make use of them. Charisma and faction with the vendor can drastically sway the prices of already expensive materials. Charisma has a limited affect, as anything over 110 charisma will not get you a better price. Faction is a primary reason for traveling to your homeland to craft, as it has a noticeable affect on prices as well.